


Command Me to be Well

by mugglegirl



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Mickey, lots of angst wow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 18:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2631302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugglegirl/pseuds/mugglegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He revels in the fear and respect he gets when they look at him after that, decides he likes that much better then the pity, so yeah, he’ll keep up that façade if it aint hurting him."</p>
<p>In which I explore Mickey immediately post his mothers death and then a little bit further down the line.<br/>One shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Command Me to be Well

**Author's Note:**

> Also in which I abuse my power as a writer for my own masochistic pleasure.
> 
> Unbeta'd so I apologize in advance for any mistakes, but feel free to point them out if you see any!
> 
> And the minor character death is Mickey's mom, just incase anyone doesn't wanna read about that
> 
> Title from Take Me to Church by Hozier
> 
> Enjoy!!

When Michele Milkovich passes, there is a period of silence in the Milkovich household. If anyone asks, it is not from mourning. No, the Milkovich’s do not mourn. If they were to mourn every time they lost something important, it would result in a never-ending cycle of sorrow. The Milkovich’s do not mourn. They move on. They pay their respects, they get up the next morning and they go to work or to school or to raid the Kash and Grab when they don’t have the money they need to stay alive.

Staying alive, Mickey thinks, is an ambiguous concept. It comes with purpose. You can’t have a life when you live like a Milkovich. No, you just survive. They survive.

They take what they can get, they don’t think about consequences. Thinking about consequences is just another one of the privileges they do not have. You take it one day at a time. You don’t carry yesterday on today’s shoulders and you definitely don’t carry tomorrow.

So when Michele Milkovich passes, they don’t worry about it. They don’t have that luxury.

It takes a week before people start to find out anyway. No one at school knows when it happens and Mickey is fourteen and definitely does not care, no he does not, so no one finds out right away.

***

When the bitches in the 10th grade come out of the girl’s bathroom snickering because “Mandy Milkovich is _crying in there._ What a fucking loser, I bet it’s because she’s failing algebra,” Mickey still definitely does not care but he does punch the ass wipe that can’t keep her mouth shut.

He get’s out of a weeks worth of detention when he tells the councilor his mother is dead, fuck you very much, but then all the teachers know and then all the students know too, and he supposes that’s karma for using his dead mother as an excuse but it’s not like he cares, okay?

The Milkovich’s do not mourn.

They do not.

The next day, when he stumbles into geometry class nine minutes late, the teacher smiles at him sadly, doesn’t say a thing. He hesitates at the door, waits to be condemned, glared at- _anything_ , but nothing comes.

The student’s all turn their heads to follow him as he carefully makes his way to the back of the class. His eyebrows crawl higher and higher up his face as he glares back at them because damn it he can _feel_ the pity emitting off them in waves and it makes him angry. He doesn’t care and he’s not even a little bit sad, so it doesn’t matter, okay? It doesn’t. _Stop looking at me like that, stop it._

He does not need their sorrow. He has enough of his own. And he says that much, when he can’t take it anymore, the way everyone tiptoes around him for rest of the day. He yells it, when his backpack zipper finally breaks and his books come tumbling down and people are rushing to help him pick up the mess he’s made.

“Fuck all of you,” He shouts, “I don’t fucking need any of you.”

And it’s true. He doesn’t need anyone, because he is alive and that is all that matters. Even if he is not living.

People move on pretty quickly, anyway. They always do here, there’ll be another tragedy tomorrow and then another a few days later and by the end of the week nobody will remember Mickey Milkovich or his dead mother. And that is how he prefers it.

Nobody forgets the punch though. There were a lot of people who wanted to punch that girl but Mickey Milkovich did it so he get’s all the credit. He revels in the fear and respect he gets when they look at him after that, decides he likes that much better then the pity, so yeah, he’ll keep up that façade if it aint hurting him.

From an outsiders view, it works too. It’s common knowledge now, that Mickey is heartless. He doesn’t care about anyone. He doesn’t care anything. He absolutely does. Not. Care.

Unfortunately for him though, it doesn’t have the same effect. Turns out it’s a lot harder to fool yourself. And he’s just gets so _angry_ with himself because the Milkovich’s fucking move on and he can’t make himself do it. And who does he think he is? He’s just another poor boy from the South Side; not the first and definitely not the last to ever lose someone, so _who is he anyway_ , to feel bad or sad, or any emotion really? He is nobody and nobody gets to care and nobody gets to feel when they come from a family like the Milkovich’s.

He’s still mad at himself when he sleeps with Ian the first time, still angry that he’s nobody, still furious that he cares. He is so consumed with self-hate that he doesn’t even realize that Ian made him forget until he remembers. Remember that _you are nobody and you don’t get a say in this life._ Remembers that _you just survive until you can’t anymore and then you die and nobody cares, just like you didn’t care._

When he does remember, he can’t decide how he feels about it, so he doesn’t feel at all.

He let’s Ian fuck him though, because he doesn’t really have to think much about anything when he’s got Ian pounding it out of him.

But Ian Gallagher makes him forget a little bit too much. Makes him forget about his nonexistent life, about his mom and _her_ nonexistent life, about his sister, and about his dad...

About his dad.

And then Ian Gallagher goes and makes him _feel_ a little bit too much that day, when his dad comes home. So Mickey makes the decision to stop feeling at all. Which is really pretty easy, he reflects, when you stop thinking all together.

It get’s harder though, especially when Ian wont fucking leave him alone. Especially when Ian is begging him to “ _Please, just admit it, just this once,”_ and doesn’t he get it? He can’t. Can’t let himself admit anything because a) it’s easier this way and b) he doesn’t deserve happiness and c) Ian definitely doesn’t deserve _this_ and Mickey is a fucking piece of shit, so no, he can’t, won’t let himself admit to anything.

And then Ian finally realizes that he’s better than this- decides to up and leave him, which Mickey can’t _not_ think about, because all of sudden the smell of the cheap cologne Ian used to wear no longer clings to his spot on the Milkovich couch and his marlboro cigarettes don’t litter the coffee table and he’s actually _gone._ Which leaves Mickey here, alone, with nobody to distract him and nobody to keep him from thinking and nobody to stop him from going too fucking far and _great job Mickey, you fucked up the one thing in your life that mattered so you could ignore everything else._

Ian fucking Gallagher and his constant need to make Mickey _feel_ is going to be the epitaph on his grave.

***

He does it, though. Fix things, you know? It takes a lot of time and not just a few bruises and broken teeth, but he fixes it.

And then he is laying in bed on a Saturday night, breathing hard because they just had sex twice in a row. He’s trying to steady his heartbeat; get it to stop beating so damn fast because Ian will notice if he rests his head on Mickey’s chest. (Which he will. Because he always does.)

When Ian finally _does_ rest his head where it belongs on Mickey’s chest- wraps his arm around his waste, Mickey lets out a small huff. He means to sound annoyed, as if Ian doesn’t already know the effect he has on Mickey. It’s hard, he realizes, to stop wanting to hide how he feels after so long.  Hard to always remember that it’s okay to feel that way now.

They’re both silent for a while. You kind of have to dedicate a moment of silence to sex that spectacular, in Mickey’s opinion.

He’s starting to nod off when Ian stirs, takes a breath like he’s about to talk and then stops.

“What’s up?” Mickey asks, because he’s ready to sleep and Ian will keep taking deep breaths until someone asks him to speak.

He takes another breath, strokes the side of Mickey’s chest softly; “Remember that one time freshmen year when you punched Christine Walker in the face?”

Mickey lets out a small laugh, “How could I forget,” he begins.

“Wait,” He stops, pushes up on his elbows to look down at Ian, “How’d you know that?”

“You kidding? Everyone knew about that. Plus, I was uh, in the bathroom,” Ian pauses for a moment, smiles sheepishly up at him, “Your sister tried to blow me during lunch period in the girls bathroom.”

Mickey’s eyes widen at that, but Ian hurries on, “Didn’t really work out. She started crying when I couldn’t get it up.”

This time, Mickey sits up and Ian follows. “Wait, wait. Are you telling me, you’re the reason she was crying?” He asks, eyebrows rising incredulously.

“No, no,” He starts, “Well, sort of. I was trying to console her though,” Ian shakes his head minutely, looks down at his intertwined fingers, “She was the first person I ever told I was gay. Aside from Lip, he figured that out all on his snooping-through-my-stuff own.”

Mickey scoffs, leans against the headboard of the bed and crosses his arms, “Interesting.”

“Well, I know it was, um,” Ian pauses, grabs the duvet and pulls it over his legs, “A couple days after your mom died.”  
“Oh.”

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Doesn’t matter either way. She was a deadbeat mother anyway.” He says, tries to keep any emotion out of his voice but he can’t look Ian in the eyes, so he glares down at his nails instead.

“Don’t really give a fuck,” He mumbles, bringing his thumb up to his mouth. He’s tempted to bite his nails all of a sudden, like he’s twelve again. 

“Don’t do that,” Ian scolds, smacks Mickey’s hand away from his mouth. Mickey looks up at him; he can feel his eyebrows doing the thing again.

“Why’d you bring it up?” He asks.

“Just wondering. You never talk about her.”

“Aint nothin’ to talk about.” He says. He feels his chest seizing up. He can’t do this.

“Alright,” Ian sighs after a moment. He lies back down, looks up at Mickey when he doesn’t instantly join him, “Okay, look, I’m sorry I brought it up. Come on, let’s just go to sleep. It’s our turn to take care of Yevgeny tomorrow so we should get some sleep while we can.”

“Yeah, okay,” He obliges, because as much as it pains him to admit it, Yevgeny day care is quickly becoming his favorite part of the week and he’s excited about taking them to the park tomorrow and maybe trying to get Yevgeny to say “Mick.”

***

The next day, when they’ve finally made it to the park and Yevgeny is chanting “MICK MICK MICK” as he crawls over the duvet they’re sitting on, Mickey decides he’s done pretending to be who he was in high school.

“She wasn’t really, you know,” he starts.

Ian turns to face him, looking perplexed, “A deadbeat I mean. My mom.”

“Oh.”

“She was actually pretty great.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment if you liked it! It's my first fic on ao3 so I'm super nervous to be posting this.
> 
> tumblr: [rnashallah](http://rnashallah.tumblr.com)


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